In traditional lottery games, lottery players walk into convenience retailers, manually fill out selection slips, and exchange cash or credit with a clerk, who then enters the selections into a lottery terminal. This lottery terminal electronically connects to a central lottery system which manages the lottery games. The central game system then issues a coded lottery ticket, and the lottery ticket is delivered to the lottery players through the local lottery terminal at the retailer. To play conventional lottery games, lottery players are required to travel to retailers and sometimes wait in line to purchase lottery tickets.
Numerous interactive games on the Internet are now available. These include games of wager such as virtual casinos. However, lottery games such as lotteries offered by the states have not been made available on the Internet. One reason may be on the part of the states regarding security and fraud as to forged winning tickets, the age and the state of residence of the players. If state lottery tickets can be purchased by players over publicly accessible electronic or telephonic network such as the Internet, it can be anticipated that many more players will participate in the lottery. Many more tickets will be sold and awards will be much larger.
Therefore, a need exists for a lottery agent system which facilitates lottery play via a electronic network such as through the Internet.